Civil and religious liberty the world over? Where are the Unitarians?

In my role as a minister, I mostly write concerning the moral and spiritual life. However, I feel that under current circumstances that I should say a few words concerning the present COVID-19 crisis. It seems to me that the Church as a whole has nothing to say on this situation other than to echo the official line of the government. Either that, or it remains muted.

Below I re-print a copy of the monthly letter I normally send out to my congregation.

 

 Dear Friends,

Unitarians are supposed to be in favour of religious and civil liberties. In the past year we have seen the suspension of religious and civil liberties throughout much of the world and in the United Kingdom. I am of course talking about the government’s response to COVID-19. In March, the Imperial College warned that unless certain measures were taken, the virus would lead to the NHS being overwhelmed and that there would be 250,000 deaths in the U.K. As we now know, nothing on this scale actually happened. But the government response, at the time, to this and other dire predictions resulted in an unprecedented lockdown and the severe curtailment of civil liberties not seen since the days of the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. The stated government objective last March was to ‘flatten the curve and to protect the NHS’.

This being achieved, in July, we were allowed to return to public worship under somewhat restricted conditions. Previous to this, our last Sunday service had taken place on the 15^th March. From the General Assembly as a whole, I have not heard so much as a whisper in terms of challenging the government’s actions or the massive propaganda campaign to which we have been and are continually made subject too. This particularly nasty virus has a lethality within the normal range of flu, but it is a fact today that pneumonia and flu is killing more people than COVID-19. Even the publicity given to rising COVID-19 infections cannot alter the fact that its lethality within the population as a whole remains low.

Moreover, it is accepted that COVID-19 can be a fatal infection but not in 99% of cases. When this virus first came to public notice our government leaders could be forgiven for saying that they knew very little about it. This argument no longer holds water. We know that it affects a certain demographic; the elderly and those with certain pre-existing health conditions. Not one healthy child has so far died from COVID-19 and furthermore there is no evidence that children can actually pass the virus on.

As we continue through October, the massive wreckage to the economy and people’s lives wrought by lockdown measures is obvious and getting increasingly worse. As we continue to receive the media’s government inspired propaganda, we should bear in mind the recent statements from government scientists forecasting that have stated that by the middle of this month, each day there will be 200 deaths per day from COVID-19 and each day there will be an extra 50,000 new cases. Taking into account the available information, we can see that this is not likely to happen, neither is there going to be a ‘third wave’; a ripple maybe.

To be clear, the flu season is now upon us and of course there will be some increase in the prevalence of COVID-19, but it is not going to have any significant impact. In two separate statements the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson has suggested that he may suspend his ‘rule of six’ on Christmas Day thus allowing grandparents and others the right to attend a family gathering for dinner and furthermore that this coming winter is going to be a ‘bumpy winter’ for all of us. But it’s been unrelentingly bumpy since the lockdown began on 23^rd March. I suppose we should be ever so grateful to the Prime Minister that he is considering letting us have Christmas dinner with our loved ones.

The Prime Minister’s calculation is perhaps that the cavalry will arrive by then or shortly afterwards, in January in the form of a mass vaccination programme that may be rolled out with some assistance from the military. This view was recently expressed in a speech to the House of Commons by the Conservative MP, Tobias Ellwood. Mr Elwood is the Chair of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee. He also holds the rank of Lieutenant General in the 77^th Brigade, the psychological warfare unit which assists the Cabinet in shaping public discourse and controlling the Covid-19 narrative.

In the same speech to the House of Commons, Mr Elwood said, ‘I believe that the biggest challenge will be in managing the transition period – potentially up to a year – when parts of our society have been liberated from the threat ​of COVID-19 and seek to return to normality, but those who have yet to be vaccinated are still subject to social distancing rules.’

Whichever way you look at it, current government thinking and policy is impacting adversely on the population as a whole and has enormous implications and consequences for religious and civil liberties. Increasingly it is being shown that the thinking behind the government’s behaviour is both irrational and authoritarian. Those who have legitimately challenged the government’s narrative are regularly dubbed by the press as ‘conspiracy theorists.’ The use of such dismissive terms, it can be argued, is merely a device to shut down the debate. But then public confidence can become somewhat dented when some of the statements of the ‘conspiracy theorists’ actually turn out to be true; 'The Great Reset' comes to mind. Speaking of public confidence, who could actually believe that the UK’s chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance has £600,000 of shares in vaccine maker, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). According to the Metro newspaper, ‘GSK is one of over 20 pharmaceutical firms around the world racing to provide a vaccine for coronavirus. The manufacturer has deals with the British and US governments to supply them with jabs, subject to terms in a final contract.’

In a similar article published in The Telegraph a statement read:

‘Government denies claims of potential conflict of interest, maintaining he is not involved in commercial decisions on coronavirus vaccines.’

No conflict of interest? We might beg to differ.

My best wishes as always,

Bob

 

 

Be Holy

 

There are thousands if not millions of books expressing different opinions on the life of Jesus and who he actually was. You would never be able to read them all even if you had several life times to spare. When we turn to the pages of the four gospels, we find striking contrasts in the depiction of Jesus. In the Gospel of Mark the story of Jesus begins only with a reference, a proclamation from the book of the prophet Isaiah ‘to make the road ready for the messiah,’ ‘Get the road ready for the Lord’ and  this proclamation is used to good effect by the writer to set the scene for a story of messianic ministry.

I dare say that such language proclaiming the welcome of a messiah would have been good news to the Jews living under Roman subjugation. Perhaps we should have no reason to suppose that Jesus like his cousin, John the Baptist may not then have been viewed any differently from the prophets or itinerant preachers that were a feature of religious life in Palestine.

When God, in the Old Testament, chose Jeremiah to be his prophet, he said:

Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations. (1:5)

The words of God, in the Gospel of Mark, at Jesus’ baptism have a similar familiarity:

You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased. (1-11)

It could be said that the prophet Jeremiah was just a human being, a creature like us, whereas Jesus is often seen as the Eternal Son of God: ‘begotten not created’, but we have this story in Mark (10):

As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. No one is good—except God alone. (17-18)

We can only reach one of two conclusions from this statement, either Jesus is lying or he is telling the truth and that and in fact he is not God. But if Jesus is lying how can he be God? since we would naturally presume that God doesn’t tell lies. The fact that Jesus taught his disciples to pray, ‘Our Father’, to pray to God and not to him is a telling point. That prayer was the same prayer that Jesus himself used to praise and to petition God.

In the Gospel of John, we are faced with an entirely different picture of Jesus:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

(1-3)

In this gospel, Jesus is God. He is the Word, the Logos, reaching out to bring into completeness God’s love and presence in creation. It’s no accident that the beginning of the Gospel of John sounds like the opening words of the first chapter of Genesis.

An early church leader, Clement of Alexandria who lived between 150-215 AD, labelled the Gospel of John as the spiritual gospel. Clement’s words may be interpreted to mean that the Gospel of John depicts Jesus in the spiritual sense. And if the emphasis is on the spiritual rather than the rational, then with some justification we may conclude that we are dealing with truths that concern God and our inner life rather than truths that can be scientifically or historically validated.

Clement viewed the Christ figure as the teacher of all mankind. He said that in Christ we are shown how to be Christian, how we are to respond to the love of God. In Johannine theology, Jesus of Nazareth ultimately became Jesus Christ the Eternal Son of God or simply, the Christ. The Hebrew term for the anointed one is the messiah and the Greek term in the language of the New Testament is the Christ. Without becoming embroiled in complex theology, I think even Unitarians can safely say that Christ reveals God, we can say that God is met in Christ and we can also say that through his teachings Christ is a revealer of God who taught us how to be more fully human.

What we are really called to is something we hardly ever hear about these days and it comes down to one word: holiness. We are called to be holy and we are called to be holy because God is holy. It’s a command that is carried from the Old Testament into the New. In Leviticus we read:

The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: ‘Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy. (19:1)

And in the psalms, we can read:

O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: fear before him, all the earth. (96:9)

But just because we are called to be holy it doesn’t follow that we have to respond. We are perfectly free to turn away. Indeed, a definition of sin is to turn away from God into a darkness that we might not see or even be aware of. This is why in the Gospel of John - Jesus is described as the light of the world.

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. (8:12)

Again, in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, in the Gospel of Luke we see that this younger, prodigal son, is endowed with a will of his own. The Father longs for the son’s return although he does not prevent him from leaving home. In this simple but profound story, Jesus reveals the love, the grace and the compassion of God. The holiness that we are called to is to be in the world but not of it, for as Jesus said:

No one can live only on food. People need every word that God has spoken. (Matthew 4:4)

Holiness is our difference with a world that says it doesn’t ‘do God’. It’s our way of being in the world, a world that by and large has turned its back on God, but it’s a world all the same, that we can look on with compassion and understanding.

Jesus reminded us that we are called to holiness and that we should strive to be so.

(But) you must always act like your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:48)

 

Not Conformed

 Paul in his Letter to the Romans wrote:

Don’t copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

That is how the letter is translated in the Bible’s New Living Translation but in the Revised Standard Version it reads like this:

Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

I have to say that I prefer the latter translation, the words in that translation, the RSV, appear to be more dynamic, they charge us not to be conformed to this world. Rather than not copying the behaviour and the customs of this world. The subtle difference appears to me to be in the implied, deliberate act of not conforming. In the face of all the world and its expectations and culture we do not bow down to it, we do not embrace it we do not conform to it for we know the difference between the temporal and the eternal between that of God and that of the world.

When we decide not to be conformed to this world but rather to be transformed by the renewal of our minds we learn of God’s love and plan for us. Then, we can say to the world that there are things more important than all the latest fashions, things more important than the news headlines, things more important than social media drama, things more important than the drugs and the violence of everyday life.

Paul in his letter, does not say how the world is and how it should be. Rather, he knows how the world is but he’s saying as the world is, that is not how you should be. In the world that Paul wrote about, in his life time, even as it is today, authentic religion is discredited and treated with contempt. We will remember that Jesus was shown all the power and the glory that this world could offer him if only he would bow down and worship it. But Jesus as we know, refused. He refused to be conformed to this world and in the same way so must we.

The Buddha simply described life as suffering that can only be overcome when we let go and cease to become subject to the desires of the world and of all its attractions. When we open ourselves to this kind of surrender, we can find God. We can find this sudden inspiration like when we are alone in the silence gazing at a beautiful moon on a gentle starlit night. But we can also feel something of the presence of God in a house of worship. There, we may find a certain contentment or even the joy we can read about in the

42^nd Psalm: This Psalm whatever its origins may be, speaks of a deep longing for God so movingly expressed in the image of the deer panting for streams of water. This is the longing of the Hebrew exile in remembrance of the Temple in Jerusalem, seeking where God is, amidst prayer and the exuberance of joy and praise.

As the deer pants for streams of water,
    so my soul pants for you, my God.
  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
    When can I go and meet with God?
  My tears have been my food
    day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
    “Where is your God?”
  These things I remember
    as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
    under the protection of the Mighty One
with shouts of joy and praise
    among the festive throng

There is nothing abstract or cerebral about this psalm beautifully written though it is, it’s raw and almost physical in its yearning its desire for that intimacy with God. These words speak to us of a true and lived religious experience that can touch the heart as well as the head.

There are however, perhaps times when religion can just become dry or intellectually arid. In 1838, The American Unitarian Minister, Ralph Waldo Emerson caused something of a stir when he gave an address to the graduating students of the Harvard Divinity School. It was an occasion that he used to preach his opposition to the central tenets of orthodox Christianity. Emerson proclaimed the primacy of personal experience in religion over teachings that are merely handed down. As Unitarianism began to develop academically, intellectually, in the 19^th century it seemed to become something of a lopsided creation leaving it without proper religious sensitivity to the extent, that Emerson said that it had become ‘corpse cold’.

For Emerson, religion was nothing unless it was a lived experience. John Steinbeck’s Tom Joad, of that famous book and film The Grapes of Wrath said:

A fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody

Emerson in his Divinity School Address said essentially the same thing about Jesus:

Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eyes the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God Incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said in this jubilee of sublime emotion, ‘I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me speaks. Would you see God, see me; or see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.

In this short passage alone, we begin to grasp Emerson’s Christology. The soul we all have, is part of one big soul, the soul in its entirety is God. Jesus with open eyes saw the mystery of the soul and lived in it. Steinbeck’s Tom Joad saw that we don’t have a soul but we each have a part of the one big soul. It can be expressed in so many ways, that ‘divine spark’ ‘our inner Christ’ or as the Quakers would have it, ‘that of God in everyone we meet’.

Emerson was seen as the founder of what became known as the Transcendentalist movement. He and the advocates of this school of thought considered the highest religious experience to be a sensation of unity with the infinite. Of God or the Soul, Emerson said:  

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity.

And a contemporary of Emerson’s, another famous American Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker, promised that he would preach nothing to his congregation that he had not experienced inwardly and made his own.

In a sense, we have been brought full circle back to the words of St Pauls who in his letter advised that we should not be conformed to the world but that we should find renewal in God. This inner voice of ours is really the soul of who we are. It exists in the deep silence of eternity, it is not conformed to the world because it has no ego and yet when all our frenetic activity ceases all our fevered thought is stilled there, we are held in the hands of God in that great soul, the ultimate unity and truth.